Adele Purvis Onri (1859/64-1948), English-born American vaudeville and circus slack wire and globe walker and serpentine dancer
(cabinet photo: Schloss, 54 West 23nd Street, New York, circa 1897)
’FIRST APPEARANCE AND INSTANTANEOUS HIT OF
Adele Onri,
IN HER MARVELOUS, BEAUTIFUL AND MAGNIFICENT PRODUCTION AT
ELECTRIC PARK, BALTIMORE,
Eclipsing everything of the kind ever see in this city. The talk of the town. Four thousand more people paid at the gates Friday night, July 17 [1896], that on the Glorious Fourth. A greater success and draw than the vitascope. The street car companies unable to supply cars enough to convey the thousands of people that flocked out to the park. The Casino not big enough to accommodate the crowd that came to see the beautiful and wondrous spectacle.
FIRST – QUEEN OF NIGHT, ascending and descending at will from the Revolving Globe; floating in space surrounded by brilliant colored light effects.
SECOND – THE LILY AND THE ROSE.
THIRD – QUEEN OF LIGHT, performed on the electric illuminated revolving globe of 10,000 lights, changing color every instant, terminating with the grandest fire-effect ever invented.
FOURTH – SUNSET, with novel stereopticon effects; suddenly a fountain of water spurts up on the stage, and within its spray Miss Onri is seen to rise and fall, glowing with all the colors of the rainbow. The whole invented, made and produced by JOHN LE CLAIR, Original inventor of the Mirror Dance. This Grand Act can be done anywhere. For terms and open time, address
ADELE ONRI, Electric Park, Baltimore, Md.’
(The New York Clipper, New York, Saturday, 25 July 1896, p. 337a)
Footlight Notes 